I don't really remember a time when I was this tired. No matter what I do, how much I sleep, I can't seem to feel normal. This past week has been pretty exhausting because of this, but here are the highlights:
Wednesday was a good day overall. I ended up telling Sr. S how much I liked his new painting. As it turns out, it is by a young Dominican artist named Ruben Vasquez, who happens to be the son of a friend of Sr. S. It was at his first exhibition that Sr. S bought the painting. I was excited by this, and also the fact that the price he paid for it was also in my price range. However, I was soon sad to learn that the artist sold all of his work at his first exhibition. Great for him, not so great for me. Adding to that, he has just been accepted to study art in the US. Regardless, I've got his name (obviously) and Sr. S knows how interested I am in the work. In the process of this entire discussion, Sr. S found out that I am looking for a piece of art to take home with me at the end of my time here. My only qualifications are that it is by a Dominican artist and that I love it. (Price is also important, however, my budget is apparently quite reasonable for what I want). Because Sr. S seems to be well connected in the Dominican art world, he has told me that he will help me to find a suitable piece and that he should be able to negotiate a good deal for me. I really like the sounds of this! He also found out that I dabble in painting as well. He was not happy to hear that I don't do any painting here in the Dominican and wanted to know why this was. I explained that it was too much of a hassle to bring my painting stuff with me (instead I settled for bringing my sketch book and some sketching sticks) and that the hobby can be kind of expensive especially when you're starting fresh. He then just up and calls his brother (who is an artist) and asks him if he can set me up with some supplies. Insane. So, as of right now, nothing has come of that, but we'll see. The only thing is that I haven't felt overly inspired while I'm here. In fact, I haven't even taken out my sketchbook once in the past 7 months. Photography is really my only creative outlet, but I am limited in what I can take photos of, since having my good camera with me makes me even more of a target. I often ponder how awesome it would be to have a body guard with me just so I could be out with my camera. One who is bilingual of course and could ask permission to take photos on my behalf. That would be awesome.
My small adventure for the day was taking some clothes to the dry cleaners near the office. Robert has been using them for his pants and I figured it was time I did so as well. Okay, I realize that sounds really bad that I haven't taken in my clothing for dry cleaning in 7 months... but you should know that I do hand-wash these things at home! I also learned a new word in the process (in both Spanish and English): indelible/indeleble. This was written on the receipt under the description of my two white silk shirts... Yep, sweat stains... that were labeled as being marks that cannot be removed. I was hopeful though because it also said, without guarantee under that. So essentially they were saying that there were bad stains that they would try to get rid of but they couldn't guarantee. I was embarrassed. However, considering I had to work without air conditioning for several months, there wasn't much I could do to prevent that... In the evening, I headed over to the colmado to meet a friend of Mari's from Norway, Silje. She is actually beginning a 4 month tour of Central America. Robert, Pavol, Gerardo and Manuel were also there.
I had a bit of adventure on Thursday morning. On my way to catch a carrito a guy yelled out his car at me, "Hey baby," and then a worker at a nearby furniture shop said, "sssssssstttttt sssstttt señorita!" I get really annoyed by this. It actually doesn't happen as much as it used to, but it still bugs me. Poor Mari gets it even more than I do, mainly because she's blond with blue eyes. Anyway, I went to catch a carrito and found one right away. I was the only one in the car. Once we got going again, the driver asked me if I was going only until Av 27 de Febrero. I told him that no, I was getting off near Pola on Lope de Vega. He then asked me if I was in a hurry. Well yes, I was. So he tells me that he just needs to go to a place near Churchill. Am I in that much of a hurry? Yes. So he drops me off in the middle of traffic and hands me back my RD$20. So I literally ran to the sidewalk (through traffic on a street which had just gotten a green light) to wait for another carrito. One came quite quickly. In this one, there was just myself and an older lady. When we passed Av 27 de Febrero, there was no one waiting for a carrito that was going down Lope de Vega, only people waiting for Lincoln. The driver turned around and was about to give me money back so I could take another one down Lope since he wanted to go down Lincoln to make the extra money. I didn't want to wait for another carrito so I told him that it didn't matter to me whether he went down Lope or Lincoln. So Lincoln it was. It isn't a big deal for me, it's just a slightly longer walk to the office. I definitely put my Spanish skills to the test that morning.
The entire day at work I was falling asleep. Which was really frustrating. I ate lunch at Pola with Robert, Mari and Silje, followed by my second espresso for the day at Sweet Bakery. In the afternoon I ended up becoming really angry over a particular issue, which really put me in a bad mood. I decided not go to pilates, since Tuesday's class had been a struggle for me and I was even more tired on Thursday. Instead, I just spent some time catching up on reading, trying to relax, forgetting about the day and going to bed early.
Today's frustration came at work. For the second day in a row, my internet stopped working on my laptop at the office. I went to tell R that it wasn't working again and he said he would come right away to take a look. I waited about an hour for him to come. He never did. In the process of waiting, the laptop ended up restarting itself (no warning or anything). Only problem was that it couldn't actually start up again. It would just get stuck. So finally I held down the power button to turn it right off, and then a bit later, pressed it again to turn it back on. This time, it ended up on a black screen that said, "Operating System not found." Obviously, that was not a message I wanted to see. Tired of waiting, I took it into R's office. He apologized for not coming by earlier, stating that there was an emergency issue with the server. He took at look at the message on the screen and said, "That is a big problem." This was followed by his touchy-feely method of computer repair, and then the realization that this method wasn't going to work. He told me that he knew how to fix it but that it would take some time. He then asked me, "do you have files on here that you need?" I replied, stating what I thought would be obvious, "Yes I have files on there that I need." He gave me a grave look and told me he would try his best to recover them. This is not good news at all. Not at all. Now I have to hope that J still has the copy of our current feasibility study on his computer. Of course there are lots of other files that I will be very unhappy to lose, but I can deal without most of them.
Lunch was quite enjoyable today. Robert and I met up with Mari and Silje at La Lasagna. Similar to last time, the food was very yummy! I also picked up my dry cleaning and was very happy to see that they had done a really good job with the icky sweat stains!
As it turns out, it is going to be a rather quiet weekend for me. Pavol is in Sosua on vacation and Robert, Mari and Silje are heading up to Santiago and the surrounding area for the weekend. I actually don't mind. I could use the peace and quiet.
any chance you are anemic?
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